Evolution Is Practically Useless, Admits Darwinist

Creation Evolution Headlines ^ | 08/30/06 | Creation Evolution Headlines

[DannyTN]

Evolution Is Practically Useless, Admits Darwinist    08/30/2006  
Supporters of evolution often tout its many benefits.  They claim it helps research in agriculture, conservation and medicine (e.g., 01/13/2003, 06/25/2003).  A new book by David Mindell, The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life (Harvard, 2006) emphasizes these practical benefits in hopes of making evolution more palatable to a skeptical society.  Jerry Coyne, a staunch evolutionist and anti-creationist, enjoyed the book in his review in Nature,¹ but thought that Mindell went overboard on “Selling Darwin” with appeals to pragmatics:

To some extent these excesses are not Mindell’s fault, for, if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits.  Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say.  Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably.  But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding?  Not very much.  Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’.  Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties.  Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.

Coyne further describes how the goods and services advertised by Mindell are irrelevant for potential customers, anyway:

One reason why Mindell might fail to sell Darwin to the critics is that his examples all involve microevolution, which most modern creationists (including advocates of intelligent design) accept.  It is macroevolution – the evolutionary transitions between very different kinds of organism – that creationists claim does not occur.  But in any case, few people actually oppose evolution because of its lack of practical use.... they oppose it because they see it as undercutting moral values.

Coyne fails to offer a salve for that wound.  Instead, to explain why macroevolution has not been observed, he presents an analogy .  For critics out to debunk macroevolution because no one has seen a new species appear, he compares the origin of species with the origin of language: “We haven’t seen one language change into another either, but any reasonable creationist (an oxymoron?) must accept the clear historical evidence for linguistic evolution,” he says, adding a jab for effect. “And we have far more fossil species than we have fossil languages” (but see 04/23/2006).  It seems to escape his notice that language is a tool manipulated by intelligent agents, not random mutations.  In any case, his main point is that evolution shines not because of any hyped commercial value, but because of its explanatory power:

In the end, the true value of evolutionary biology is not practical but explanatory.  It answers, in the most exquisitely simple and parsimonious way, the age-old question: “How did we get here?”  It gives us our family history writ large, connecting us with every other species, living or extinct, on Earth.  It shows how everything from frogs to fleas got here via a few easily grasped biological processes.  And that, after all, is quite an accomplishment.

See also Evolution News analysis of this book review, focusing on Coyne’s stereotyping of creationists.  Compare also our 02/10/2006 and 12/21/2005 stories on marketing Darwinism to the masses.

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¹Jerry Coyne, “Selling Darwin,” Nature 442, 983-984(31 August 2006) | doi:10.1038/442983a; Published online 30 August 2006.

You heard it right here.  We didn’t have to say it.  One of Darwin’s own bulldogs said it for us: evolutionary theory is useless.  Oh, this is rich.  Don’t let anyone tell you that evolution is the key to biology, and without it we would fall behind in science and technology and lose our lead in the world.  He just said that most real progress in biology was done before evolutionary theory arrived, and that modern-day advances owe little or nothing to the Grand Materialist Myth.  Darwin is dead, and except for providing plot lines for storytellers, the theory that took root out of Charlie’s grave bears no fruit (but a lot of poisonous thorns: see 08/27/2006).
    To be sure, many things in science do not have practical value.  Black holes are useless, too, and so is the cosmic microwave background.  It is the Darwin Party itself, however, that has hyped evolution for its value to society.  With this selling point gone, what’s left?  The only thing Coyne believes evolution can advertise now is a substitute theology to answer the big questions.  Instead of an omniscient, omnipotent God, he offers the cult of Tinker Bell and her mutation wand as an explanation for endless forms most beautiful.  Evolution allows us to play connect-the-dot games between frogs and fleas.  It allows us to water down a complex world into simplistic, “easily grasped” generalities.  Such things are priceless, he thinks.  He’s right.  It costs nothing to produce speculation about things that cannot be observed, and nobody should consider such products worth a dime.
    We can get along just fine in life without the Darwin Party catalog.  Thanks to Jerry Coyne for providing inside information on the negative earnings in the Darwin & Co. financial report.  Sell your evolution stock now before the bottom falls out.
Next headline on:  Evolutionary Theory

[A. Pole]

Where has anyone on this thread said genomes anticipate need? That is Lamarckianism -- rejected in the last century.

It might return in a new form. Science evolves too.

[MeanWestTexan]

The study of evolution and/or history are both the study of the past, and both only useful indirectly.

Note this is not an opinon re: evolution, just an opinion that I disagree that the study of evolutionary process (or whatever happened) itself is useless.

Obviously, something is going on and/or went on to give us these sequential fossils, and to refuse to study it because "it is useless" is to ignore something God did, merely because one disagrees with the prevailing explaination.

To me, that is spitting in God's eye.

He created a wonderful Universe. We should explore it high and low, past and future.

[js1138]

You have a theory? We have good laboratory evidence of evolution occurring where every possible point mutation occurs on the gene responsible for a trait.

A few such experiments do not exhaust all possibilities, but they do demonstrate that successful adaptation to change can occur simply by trying every possible mutation.

[muawiyah]

"less change"? You mean the discovery of DNA and viruses meant nothing?

We now know you didn't get all your genes from your ancestors ~ or even from mutations.

[muawiyah]

Look, where there's no causal link.............. doesn't matter what the weather is, it's simply not hooked into my DNA.

[muawiyah]

The fact that Saturn had "rings" was discovered by Galileo. The fact that it had "other" characteristics out to the side was known since ancient times.

It's like craters on the Moon ~ even the ancients could see them even if they didn't know what they were.

Here, with Saturn, we have a feature that could not be clearly seen, but that doesn't meanno one noticed something.

[muawiyah]

What is thread stalking? The claim was made on this thread. Presumably you started at the beginning and read every post.

[js1138]

"less change"? You mean the discovery of DNA and viruses meant nothing?

Did not affect the concepts of common descent and variation and selection, just as Newton and Einstein did not change the concept of the earth revolving around the sun.

[js1138]

The claim was made on this thread. Presumably you started at the beginning and read every post.

Then it will be easy for you to find it.

You haven't been able to read my posts correctly, so I have little faith that going back will yield what you claim.

Give me a post number.

[js1138]

Look, where there's no causal link.............. doesn't matter what the weather is, it's simply not hooked into my DNA.,p>As I said, welcome to mainsream biology.

[muawiyah]

RE: The core issue to which the creationists object is common descent.: It doesn't matter whether creationists object to it or not, evidence to the contrary is met with total derision on the part of evolutionists.

Look, the human genome project demonstrated that our line of critters managed to pick up genes from bacteria and viruses along the way ~ this is true of all the critters we've studied.

The trick is you or I could pick up genes from a virus (through some as yet unknown mechanism) that get inserted into our genome, which we could pass on to our descendants, but your genes would NOT have a common origin with mine in that case, nor would those of our descendants.

Still, presumably we'd all be the same species.

I really doubt the creationists want to believe bug genes can be picked up, but why are evolutionists so aghast that this could be the case? Why do they hang onto some sort of pristine "common origin" idea when it's been so handily refuted.

[svcw]

Logic? Well, I was just thinking about it the other day (evolution) and it seems if that if a person subscribes to evolution, survival of the fittest and all, that one would not use medical intervention to be healthy or for that matter save a sick persons life.
Could it be that we have intervened in evolutionary progress by keeping alive those humans that are not the 'fittest'. in days past the weak died off, now we keep them alive. Thats all.

[muawiyah]

Try 168. He made yet other posts that equated any change with evolution. Hence my points about substituting "evolution" for "change" and coming up with ridiculous statements.

[muawiyah]

Now you are on both sides of the question.

[microgood]

What I said about the Nazis is that they were motivated by religion rather than science.

I would have expected better of you. Your knowledge of history is appalling and this statement is as despicable as anyone blaming Darwin for the Nazis. People hijack ideas for their own end all the time, and to blame it on religion is to show how ignorant you are about that era in history.

[RightWhale]

Aristotle, botanist, had quite a garden, especially with the new plants he brought back from Persia. He knew the names of maybe 1/4 of the plants in his garden.

[js1138]

Evolution is every single little change even if there's "no change" only because you are defining it that way.
The problem as I see it is stirring a can of paint would be "evolution" under your definition, and I simply will not accept that.

We need to keep the word "evolution" meaning something other than "change" or we'll have a situation where some jerksilly postal bureaucrat comes up with a new name for the "change of address" form ~ she'll want to call it "address evolution", and then where will we be?

Lost!

This post seems to be where you lost your way on the word "change".

Evolution is a change in allele frequency in a population over time. Evolution is not a property of individuals. It is a property of populations. What changes is the percentage of a population having specific traits.

The source of variation is not crucial to the dynamics of change. It could be stochastic or it could be engineered by humans. What makes the change significant to evolution is whether the change results in differential reproductive success. And of course that can involve human intervention. In the long run the dynamics are the same.

[GourmetDan]

Apparently you don't know how flu vaccines are made.

IDers try to predict which *existing* strains will become a problem and *create* vaccines for those.

'Evolution' has no power to *predict* which flu strain will emerge for the flu season.

[js1138]

People hijack ideas for their own end all the time, and to blame it on religion is to show how ignorant you are about that era in history.

Tell that to the Darwin caused Hitler crowd. The fact is that Hitler hijacked religion AND science to prop up his power, but his targets were selected according to longstanding religious prejudice. If you want an example of science being abused in the name of eugenics it would be better to look to Sweden, or even the United States. Both have sterilized the retarded.